Boycie & Beyond by John Challis

Author:John Challis [Challis, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wigmore Books Ltd
Published: 2012-09-19T22:00:00+00:00

Whether one likes it or not, one’s fiftieth birthday marks a key stage in life. After that point has been reached, others only refer to you as ‘Young Man’ in a spirit of irony. As a twenty year old, I perceived people over fifty as past their sell-by date, committed only to a downward slope and definitely ‘old’. But when I reached my half-century,I found it almost impossible to grasp that it was over thirty years since I’d set off at the wheel of the Argyle Theatre for Youth’s Commer van, to play twenty shows of Pinocchio each week all over the country.

In gloomier moments I asked myself what I had learned since then – how much had I progressed? The answers I gave myself weren’t encouraging... but at least I could now risk a few optimistic thoughts about my love life.

So far, in the months since I’d met Carol, it looked faintly possible that I might one day find myself in a satisfactory relationship that didn’t involve a neurotic, a psychopath or an egomaniac (apart from myself). And I certainly didn’t feel old.

Being fifty didn’t seem to me like a reason for celebrating on a lavish scale, especially as it was an event which I was in half a mind to ignore, so I compromised by marking the occasion with a party for a dozen close friends at The Depot, a terrific restaurant at the bottom of White Hart Lane in Barnes.

Carol was there, to be at my side, with Keith and Madeleine (who had been so loyal during my mad Inge phase), Bob Hankinson and other members of the Coach & Horses community. Terry Booth, who was in Season’s Greetings at the Mill, came with Carla Wansey Jackson.

After that, and once Season’s Greetings had ended its run, Carol and I seemed to have reached a tipping point in our relationship. I was beginning to realize it was time to get off the fence, or lose the impetus of where we’d got to by then, and I was ready to be receptive, when she subtly hinted that we might go halfway round the world together to visit the Hawaiian Islands.

Carol had told me a lot about Hawaii and how she’d found her spiritual home there. She’d first been ten years before, after reading about the place and being strongly attracted by what she’d learned.

On her first visit she’d met Tom Selleck and his cronies, while he was there making his TV series, Magnum PI. She had fallen in love with the islands and the kind of life they offered and was determined to go back as often as possible. By seriously concentrating her resources, she’d managed to go back no less than eight times since her first visit. I was impressed by her enthusiasm and the pictures she showed me, shots of her looking bronzed, fit and magnificent on the beach at Waikiki, surrounded usually by suitably handsome men and resplendent in front of the Outrigger Canoe Club, with

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